Honor your past, even the regrets and mistakes. Wait. What?

As I was praying the other day, I saw these words: "Honor your past." Wait, what? It wasn't something I had ever thought about before. Usually, when I thought of the past, there was pain: regrets and mistakes that I wish I could go back and change. Back to the future. Remember that movie? How many times have I wished we could really do that? More times than I can count, I will tell you that much. If you are like me, you've gone over the past countless times, maybe even hundreds, reliving and wishing for different decisions and outcomes. Wishing we could go back in time and do it all over again, in a very different way. I have replayed the new versions many times and, of course, they are always better, until I read the book by Matt Haig, "The Midnight Library." You might want to check it out. The main character experiences pain and challenges in every different, alternate, version of her life, which replays many times. No one version is better than the other. It made me wonder about my own life. We always think that the other choices in our lives would have turned out better, a true assumption. What if they had been worse? I had never thought of that! In my mind, the worst had happened, but had it? Of course not.

Then, there is the past we had no control over, the childhood that we couldn't do much about and wishing our parents had done it differently. Now that I am older, I feel empathy and compassion for the choices they made, but there are still times I wish things had been different.

It had never occurred to me to honor my past, and it literally stopped me in my tracks. Honor the past, even what I considered to be the regrets and mistakes that caused so much pain? I had to look up the definition of the word, "honor," since I was so confused about this: "regard with great respect" (according to the Oxford dictionary). Now, I was even more confused!

Our life journey is like a hike.

I spent a great deal of time over the following days thinking about it, until I looked back on my life, like a hiker climbing up a mountain (a fairly good analogy?). He/she doesn't look back down the mountain, once reaching the top, and wish that the path had been different. After the climb, the hiker considers the trek up the mountain as part of the journey, all of it: the steep, the rocky, the slippery, even the muddy. The hiker doesn't try to forget or regret parts of it. He/she is too busy enjoying the incredible view, impressed with the accomplishment and proud to have made it! It was all part of the climb. That's when I understood the message God was telling me.

I had been so ashamed and embarrassed about my past, both my own mistakes and my childhood. But now I understood. It was all part of the journey. And, yes, it has definitely felt like a very steep, rocky, slippery, at times muddy, hike up a mountain. No easy ride or should I say hike, for me, as much as I would have liked it to be! Don't we all?

Honor the past, all of it: the good, bad, and the ugly, even the mistakes that I cried about and asked God how they happened? Why didn't God stop me in my foolishness? Like me, have you ever wondered about that? Sometimes free will doesn't seem so free.

Our paths, our lives, have led us to where we are today, hopefully most of us can see the growth. For those of you who don't: there is still time. It is the journey and what we have learned and gained that is the most important part. And that is what we must honor. There are times when I still think of the past and wonder what could have been, but I want you to know that when we ask for and seek healing, it comes, and those regrets fade away. As a therapist, I can tell you that we all have them. You and I are not the only ones.

When God tells us to honor the past, it's time to stop reliving it and start focusing on the present, having gratitude that we are never alone. As I look down the mountain, I understand now that all parts of the journey are and were sacred. God calls us to honor them all.

All of our life is sacred.

Even the parts we would like to forget. Those muddy parts that you would like to wipe off for good? They are also holy and sacred.

Deborah Ann Minke, M.A., B.Ed., OCT, CH-C

Energize and Rise LLC

https://www.energizeandrise.com

I like to write my own blogs. :)